Coolest Homemade Herbie the Love Bug Costume

I made this homemade Herbie the Love Bug costume when my son was 2. He was in LOVE with Herbie the Love Bug and of course, we couldn’t find a single Herbie costume anywhere. It is completely homemade (carved out of a block of styrofoam, painted, striped, and we even added functional LED headlights and tail lights). We used styrofoam to keep it lightweight, and since we live near Seattle, we had to coat it before painting it to make sure it would hold up in the rain.

As it turned out it fit perfectly on his red rider wagon, so even though we attached suspenders for him to carry it with, we set him and Herbie in the wagon and would pull him up to the houses for trick-or-treating fun. He would pull the string on the “hood ornament” and the home owners would drop the candy into Herbie’s “trunk”.

Very fun to do and the most ambitious project we’ve done to date (it took nearly a month to complete it!), but I’m sure he’ll come up with something else to challenge us soon!

5 thoughts on “Coolest Homemade Herbie the Love Bug Costume”

This costume was clearly well thought out and designed. I like that all the lights worked and that it could be walked with or ridden with. Creative and safety conscious plus, it looks far better than anything you could buy!

Our 6 year old has been in LOVE with Herbie for 3 years and we have had fun Herbie themed parties. This year he wanted Herbie for his Halloween costume, too. We decided to make it our of cardboard – love the styrofoam idea way better! My husband has a motorized scooter and we are doing to mount it on top. Gavin will then drive the scooter and it will look like he is driving Herbie. We were going to use a new gas can as his candy-collector, we we love your idea better of opening the hood. So…. cute! Thanks for the idea.

It is so interesting how kids become to attached to Herbie. We have found out that so many are in our research of pictures to use for our Herbie projects.

Andie, when we made this costume we went to a manufacturer and got a 2ft x 3ft scrap cube. Since then we’ve discovered a styrofoam recycling facility in our area and they often can cut something to size for a minimal cost. I recently got a 2ft x 2ft cube there for $15 for a giant rubiks cube for our 80’s party. We then used a projector to get the basic shape and then an electric knife and dremel to carve and mold the rest.